Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [59]
Yes, I made up that last part. Couldn’t resist.
In between drinking and talking, Bobby entertained me with his version of a stupid pet trick. Mr. Hull is blessed— there is no other word for it—with the longest tongue in the known universe, and not just among humans. Few aardvarks can match Bobby for length or width. I watched him stretch the tip of his tongue all the way up to the top of his forehead. He spread the tongue across his nose until it covered his face like a snug pink baseball glove. I could barely see his eyes under that slab of meat. He finished the demonstration by licking down his eyebrows. I am sure this is the reason his wife lets him out only once a month.
Okay, that is the last joke I make at Hull’s expense. Bobby is among the most congenial of men, and I love him dearly. I would hate to offend him with an errant word. But it is not just respect that keeps me from throwing another jibe. Fear also motivates me. When angered, Bobby is not the sort of guy who will chase you. No, it’s much worse. He will catch you. And in a fight the Golden Jet would undoubtedly display all the delicacy of Mike Tyson coming off a six-month steroid jag. First Bobby would cut the boxing ring in half on me. Then he would cut it in half again. Then he would cut it in half one last time. Then he would cut me into ribbons.
Bobby and I followed his drinking regimen until nearly dawn. We downed that entire bottle of cognac—on top of two carafes of wine—and two pitchers of ice water. I stayed drunk out of my gourd for two straight days, most of which I spent crawling over bathroom tiles barking. But Bobby was right about the hangover. The prolonged stupor carried me right past any traditional morning penance.
Bobby, on the other hand, rose early the next afternoon to devour a large lunch without showing any ill effects whatsoever. Muskie eater.
Our slow-pitch softball team developed as an extension of the original Hockey Legends. I still played hardball in several senior leagues around New England, Arizona, and Florida, but there were never enough games to feed my habit, and softball kept me in shape. The Legends let me take an occasional turn on the mound, but I usually played first base or the outfield. I was the only former pro baseball player on the roster. Among the hockey greats who traveled with us were Jimmy Mann, Eddie Shack, Frank Mahovlich, Marcel Dionne, Maurice Richard, and Jean-Guy Talbot. Angelo Mosca, the Canadian Football League Hall of Famer, rounded out the squad.
Molson paid each athlete $500 a day plus expenses to compete in charity games against the police and fire departments throughout the Maritimes and upper St. Lawrence region. We played thirty games in thirty-five days and spent a good deal of our time watching movies on the team bus. Our driver, Gilles, was a lovely man with a gentle manner and more endurance than your average mountain climber. He could sit at the wheel of that bus for twenty hours straight without taking a break.
One thing about Gilles worried me. He had no sense of direction whatsoever, a handicap for any bussie. One evening we were traveling to a tavern in Hamilton, Ontario, to eat dinner with a team of local policemen we had played earlier in the day. Gilles drove through the city for nearly an hour without finding the place. He stopped to study the map before turning onto a road he guaranteed would bring us to the tavern in no time flat. Five minutes later, farm country surrounded us.